Expertise

Biography

Dr. Jill S. Baron is a senior scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey, and a Senior Research Ecologist with the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University. Her interests include applying ecosystem concepts to management of human-dominated regions, and understanding the biogeochemical and ecological effects of climate change and atmospheric nitrogen deposition to mountain ecosystems.

She is founder and Co-Director of the John Wesley Powell Center for Earth System Science Analysis and Synthesis. She is the North American Director of the International Nitrogen Initiative. Baron was President of the Ecological Society of America in 2014, is a Certified Professional Ecologist, and a Fellow of the ESA. She was named a Woman of Vision in 2015 by Colorado Women of Influence for her work advancing women’s role in science. Baron is active in US National Climate Assessment efforts, has given testimony to Congress on western acid rain and climate change issues, and was Editor-in-Chief of Issues in Ecology, an Ecological Society of America publication for non-scientists from 2009-2012. She is founder and Principal Investigator of the Loch Vale Watershed long-term monitoring and research program in Rocky Mountain National Park, an instrumented catchment with 33 years of continuous records.

Education

Ph.D. Ecosystem Ecology, Colorado State University, 1991

M.S. Land Resources, University of Wisconsin - Madison, 1979

B.S. Plant Sciences, Cornell University, 1976

Professional Experience

2009-present Co-Director, John Wesley Powell Center for Earth System Science Analysis and Synthesis

We present evidence that land use practices in the plains of Colorado influence regional climate and vegetation in adjacent natural areas in the Rocky Mountains in predictable ways. Mesoscale climate model simulations using the Colorado State University Regional Atmospheric Modelling System (RAMS) projected that modifications to natural vegetation...

Most forests in North America remain nitrogen limited, although recent studies have identified forested areas that exhibit symptoms of N excess, analogous to overfertilization of arable land. Nitrogen excess in watersheds is detrimental because of disruptions in plant/soil nutrient relations, increased soil acidification and aluminum mobility,...

The Rocky Mountains in the USA and Canada encompass the interior cordillera of western North America, from the southern Yukon to northern New Mexico. Annual weather patterns are cold in winter and mild in summer. Precipitation has high seasonal and interannual variation and may differ by an order of magnitude between geographically close locales,...

We employed grass and forest versions of the CENTURY model under a range of N deposition values (0.02–1.60 g N m−2 y−1) to explore the possibility that high observed lake and stream N was due to terrestrial N saturation of alpine tundra and subalpine forest in Loch Vale Watershed, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado. Model results suggest that...

Even a casual observer from an aircraft will note the varied landscape of mountainous terrain. These variations in land surface include the terrain features themselves as well as patchiness from different vegetation types, surface geology, urbanization, etc. There are two major questions related to climate system dynamics that need to be addressed...

We explored the seasonal characteristics in wet deposition chemistry for two sites located at different elevations along the east slope of the Colorado Front Range in Rocky Mountain National Park. Seasonally separated precipitation was stratified into highly concentrated (high salt), dilute (low salt), or acid-dominated precipitation groups. These...